


all these small things, they gather 'round

by abandonedquiche (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: Under(grad)tale [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Humantale, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 18:31:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11811798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/abandonedquiche
Summary: Your name is Sans and today is Chara's first day back at their old research lab since the events of May.Little did they know that you and the rest of their friends had a little something special planned.Little did /you/ know that the machines would be puking fucked up data like a freshman on frat pledge day, later on.





	all these small things, they gather 'round

**Author's Note:**

> set somewhere between chapter 7 and chapter 8 of ["the worst of starts, the mercy parts"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11802723?view_full_work=true?)

**_August 201X - Sans Gaster_ **

It’s Chara’s first day back in the lab, and you are mildly nervous _for_ them. The last time they set foot in this lab was May 3rd, 201X, approximately three hours before they decided to put their little plan into action.

They open their locker, and empty it of its contents. Their lab coat, meticulously clean as always. Their cup of chocolate chai. A pack of Marlboro Reds that has surely gone stale by now - it’s been almost three months - but they’ll smoke anything with tobacco in it. Several black pens, and a single pencil.

Once they put on the coat, they put the pens and the pencil into their breast pocket.

They jump when they see you here.

“Sans, wouldja mind giving me a warning or something? Before you appear out of the ether?”

“I’m here,” you say, grinning. “There’s your warning.”

“Go fuck yourself,” they reply.

“Got everything you needed out of your locker?” you ask them.

They nod.

“Good, ‘cause the rest of the lab, and a few other people, have a little something planned before we get to work. Not really anything we can do in the lab, since that wouldn’t be sanitary. We’re using Gaster’s office for it, since he’s in a meeting with Asgore and not there at the moment.”

Chara quirks an incredulous eyebrow.

“What the hell are you talking about?” they want to know.

“You’ll see.” You’d grab them by the sleeve and lead them to the office, but you don’t want to make them anxious. “Follow me, freshman.”

They do.

And of course, since a few of these people are your friends, they have no idea how to maintain a low profile once they get to Gaster’s office.

“Surprise!” Undyne yells, startling the shit out of Chara.

They don’t have a panic attack but it’s a close call. They do that deep breathing thing for a while.

Then, they look around the office carefully. There’s Asriel, Napstablook, Bobbi, Ragel, Undyne, and Alphys. And there’s a box on Gaster’s desk. A cake box.

Bob does the honors of cutting the strings and getting it open.

“I told the people at the bakery that I wanted chocolate cake with chocolate icing. A lot of chocolate icing. And to cover the whole thing in chocolate chips. We’re all gonna end up with diabetes after this, but at least we’ll have some cake before we go.”

Chara blinks like they don’t know what to say.

“Why the cake?” they ask weakly.

“It’s for you,” Asriel says. “We’re celebrating your 20th birthday a few weeks late. Also, your return to the lab.”

You nod at Chara. “That’s exactly it, kiddo.”

You sigh.

“Okay, well, someone hurry up and get the candles on this thing, so we can eat it before my dad gets back,” you say, seriously. “Much as I don’t think he’d really give a damn that we were throwing a birthday party in here, I’m not trying to test that hypothesis.”

Asriel takes a box of candles out of his pocket, and puts twenty of them on the cake.

“I need your cigarette lighter,” he tells you.

You toss it to him, and he lights the candles.

“Please don’t sing for me,” Chara says, their voice strained. “I’d rather you didn’t. You didn’t have to go through all of--”

“Well, we already did, so you might as well eat your cake,” Bob points out. “Make a wish, Chara.”

They glance around at all of you once more.

You’re not sure what they wish for.

Then, they blow the candles out.

* * *

Later, after the festivities are over, and the remains of the cake are stowed away in Gaster’s minifridge - the man needs to consume something other than black coffee at Grillby’s - you and your research group get down to work.

“What’s left to do today?” It’s already 4:30 in the afternoon, so you’re assuming that Alphys, Asriel, and Undyne finished most of the heavy duty shit. Alphys gestures to a bunch of cuvettes, already loaded with analytes.

“We still need the data from those, Sans.”

Chara has this mildly annoyed look on their face, mostly because nobody’s given them instructions yet. Everyone else is being useful and they’re sitting around like a foul-tempered lump.

“Hey, freshman,” you say to them.

“What.”

“I think it’s time for me to show you how some of the more delicate equipment in this department works,” you say. “C’mon, we’re taking a field trip. Your days of centrifuge duty are coming to an end. Assuming we get a new freshman next year, of course.”

“What am I doing, exactly?”

“You’ll be operating the UV-Vis spectrophotometer, and recording data as it comes,” you reply. “So uh... basically the same shit as the centrifuge, and the mass spec, but uh, this equipment is worth more than four years of tuition here. You're going to need more training before you understand what you need to, but I figure that you gotta start somewhere.”

“You trust me with such an undertaking?”

“Well, you haven’t broken anything except for a flask in your sophomore year, so I think you’ll be fine. And I’ll be supervising.”

* * *

 

Your lab group catches late dinner (9 PM) at Grillby’s while poring over all the data you’ve collected today. Undyne takes out her laptop and brings up the previous data from other dates and trials.

“I don’t know what to make of this,” to be honest. “I lived in Waterfall Quad in undergrad, so I know what garbage looks like, and this looks like a pile of fucking garbage. It doesn’t make any damn sense, but I’m only a grad student. Maybe the doctor will be able to interpret this shit after Alphys sends everything to him.”

Alphys takes a small bite from her sandwich. “All of y-you realize t-that if the results aren’t, well, s-stastically significant, we have to s-start from square one at some p-point.”

“Not really,” you counter. “If our results are inconclusive, we just write a paper that states ‘we done goofed’ but worded slightly more scientifically than that. _Then_ we start from square one.”

“We Done Goofed would be a rather interesting paper title,” Asriel says. “The reviewers would be sure to read the paper’s contents, if only to ascertain how we ‘done goofed’.”

Chara snorts into their gin and tonic.

You have no idea what this kid’s affinity for gin and tonic is. You hate gin, and you hate tonic water. How they manage to pound those down like a frat boy is a mystery of the universe.

“Maybe it was a screw-up on my part?” they ask. “Today was only my first time using some of the equipment.”

Undyne and Alphys shake their heads.

“No, this isn’t one wonky set of data. This a bunch of screwed up data, and not even consistently screwed up data, going back to when you were still in the h--... well, while you _weren’t_ here,” Undyne says. “It’s not your fault, Chara.”

In anger, Undyne pounds her fist on the table, causing all your respective beverages to jump. Chara doesn’t react, likely because they’re accustomed to Undyne’s outbursts of anger.

“All the work we did, and it’s probably for nothing,” she says. “I’ll send what I have to Doctor Gaster tonight, so you’re not in the hot seat, Alphys. That’s really all I can do now.”

Undyne orders herself a whiskey and coke. Actually, she orders three. She spares one last look at her laptop, and then shuts the lid.

She downs the first drink in about a minute.

“Fucking hell. All this work, and it doesn’t mean anything, really.”

“Look at it this way, Undies,” you say, using an old nickname you gave her because she hated it. “Maybe you forgot to convert to radians.”

It’s a long-standing inside joke between the two of you. A few years back, you were a TA for one of her Physics classes, when you were teaching the class about angles in circular motion. She couldn’t understand why all the correct answers people were giving were nothing like the answers she was getting.

As it turned out, she’d forgotten to program her calculator from degrees to radians, hence her fucked up answers.

It was a stupid mistake - like, she’d learned how to do this when she was in high school trigonometry - and she got angry at herself over it.

“We all fuc-” You stopped yourself, remembering that you had other students. You corrected what you were going to say. “We all mess up sometimes, Undyne. Try not to take it to heart.”

Not converting from degrees to radians wouldn’t account for your shitty data, but you thought it might make her smile. It does, briefly.

She snorts. “Y’know, I actually kind of miss Physics with calculus. Way easier than this shit.”

Chara raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t. I hated Physics. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I have to take Thermo next year. If they let me take Thermo. I had to take incompletes in all my spring classes.”

“I liked Physics with calculus,” Asriel says.

Chara rolls their eyes.

“Asriel, you are an academic masochist. You don’t count.”


End file.
